Finding my Tribe

What a Year!

Hello Friends!

Christine here. It's been a pretty big year so far. I turned 50 and my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. One kid moved away, one kid is studying abroad and one kid is the only kid left in the house. So. Much. Change.

My Family

The good thing about turning 50--I felt like a switch was flipped. I felt like I was finally becoming the version of me that I wanted all along. No longer all wife or all mother, free to explore the things that I loved to do. More importantly, I began to realize the importance of self care and building my tribe. It is my turn now.  

A few years ago, I began attending the Quechee Vermont retreats. The women,  the Inn, the food, the YARN. Scrumptious. Vermont--you had me at Hello! That first retreat cemented my love of fiber, obsession with knitting and my desire to find a way to make this my job.  I just kept noodling the idea around in my head. 

Fast forward 4 years and here we are. I am taking Knitting and Yoga Adventures into the future! I can't believe this is my life now.  I cannot begin to express how much the connections I have made over the years, through the retreats, have stuck with me and influenced my life. My tribe is firmly in place and they are awesome. Let's build it up even more, together. There is lots of room here!

Posted on Instagram last year with
1 more sleep til Vermont

I look forward to being with all of you in the upcoming retreats. For 2020, we have the Cape Ann MA Retreat in April, KNIT MAINE in September and Quechee Vermont in November. What else does the future hold? We will see but I have lots of ideas spinning around up in my brain. I am anxious to share those ideas with you and hear your thoughts as well. 

See you soon!

Christine

@ChristineWKnits

Delicious Design

Confession: this is not my only knit blog! Scandalous, I know. Actually, as a practicing poly-blogamist, I also post my knit thoughts at the Hill Country Weavers blog. (HCW is my local beloved knitting store in Austin, TX.) As I mentioned over there in a post earlier this week, I am thrilled to have an article in the new Intervweave KNITS mag. It's a profile of renowned designer Deborah Newton. It was both an honor and a hoot talking to Deb, who is so inspiring and so encouraging and who, at least as we were talking, led me to fantasize that I, too, could be a knit designer.

Well, okay, in a sense I already am. I design very goofy, no pattern, 3-D sculptural stuff, like a hat that looks like a roasted chicken, another that looks like a menorah, and yes, even a pair of handcuffs. These sill projects are usually the result of a challenge by my boyfriend, Warren, who knows I can't resist when he throws a kooky knitting idea my way. It is fun to try to figure out how to make these things into actual finished items, even if they aren't terribly practical.

But seriously, folks, there is a wistful part of me that loves the idea of being so thoroughly fluent in knit that I can go from the visualizing stage to the completion stage in no time at all. I probably starting wishing for this ability maybe seven years into knitting (my first four years I would only ever make garter-stitch rectangles, so afraid was I of learning to purl since I knew this would lead me to want to learn complicated patterns). Hanging out on Monhegan Island with Lisa and Susan just fed the beast. Here I was, spending an entire week living and breathing in the presence of great designers. When I saw the pattern for Lisa's Fair Isle bag, I was blown away. How did she design it? How could I ever learn to knit it, let alone come up with something similar on my own?

I say that knitting with Lisa and Susan was like jumping out of a plane with an instructor strapped to your back, someone who understands when to pull the parachute cord. With their patience, I figured out that Fair Isle bag and also how to knit lace. I was stunned that I could get a grasp on these things. And when I came home, I used my newfound skills-- the main one being confidence-- to actually start playing around with design. Nothing I'm ready to show off or anything. But still, I was psyched to get the nudge I needed to take another baby step forward on the design path.